"If you're looking for a machine you can tinker with, upgrade, or repair yourself, you're better off looking elsewhere, and this is news to no one."

That's a low bar. Repairability doesn't mean that the buyer is the only one who would service it. The high cost of repair for devices like this make it essentially disposable in the most wallet hurting sense possible.

I wonder if the 'repairability' or lack-thereof will change with the stepping down of Jony Ive.

I suspect a lot of people would be fine with a few millimeters thicker if they can upgrade the RAM or SSD down the road. And hey! It means room for slightly larger batteries too! Sure, it'll have some ounces of weight, but not much.

So they put a 4-core Intel CPU that's got a higher actual TDP (as opposed to Intel's optimistic claim) but decreased the capacity of the cooling system... I expect fairly strong throttling under sustained load, to say nothing about the model that turbos to 4.5ghz...

The rumors of a redesigned keyboard this fall have basically Osborne'd these machines... regardless of whatever they're promising about reliability, you'd be crazy to buy a butterfly keyboard now. Good riddance to that design, it will not be missed.

I wonder if the 'repairability' or lack-thereof will change with the stepping down of Jony Ive.

I suspect a lot of people would be fine with a few millimeters thicker if they can upgrade the RAM or SSD down the road. And hey! It means room for slightly larger batteries too! Sure, it'll have some ounces of weight, but not much.

A lot of people, sure, but almost certainly nowhere near the number of people who buy the same line of machine and don't even think about doing such things. It's not a big enough addressable market for Apple to shift gears and alter what the market has shown to be their most effective differentiator.

The increased performance is quite welcome and fixes a glaring weak point in the previous system. The zero upgradability continues to be a sore spot with me unfortunately. That (and the keyboard) are the two reasons why my wife is reticent to upgrade to a newer machine. The improvements in the performance makes it a little easier to tolerate though.

(The addition of the touchbar is completely useless to her and I kind of wished it wasn't there)

I wonder if the 'repairability' or lack-thereof will change with the stepping down of Jony Ive.

I suspect a lot of people would be fine with a few millimeters thicker if they can upgrade the RAM or SSD down the road. And hey! It means room for slightly larger batteries too! Sure, it'll have some ounces of weight, but not much.

I simply don't think that's true. I mean, "a lot" of people in an absolute sense (thousands! tens of thousands! maybe more!), but not in a relative one. I haven't traded out components in my desktop, with big nice fat thumbscrews on the back, in at least two years. The only reason I've opened it at all is to clean fans and heatsinks.

These are mature products, especially relative to the year-over-year improvements in available technology. Most users don't expect to service or upgrade them in detail, any more than they expect to upgrade the engine in their car.

I wonder if the 'repairability' or lack-thereof will change with the stepping down of Jony Ive.

I suspect a lot of people would be fine with a few millimeters thicker if they can upgrade the RAM or SSD down the road. And hey! It means room for slightly larger batteries too! Sure, it'll have some ounces of weight, but not much.

A lot of people, sure, but almost certainly nowhere near the number of people who buy the same line of machine and don't even think about doing such things. It's not a big enough addressable market for Apple to shift gears and alter what the market has shown to be their most effective differentiator.

It would be nice to be able to remove the drive when sending the unit in for repair, especially since you're no guaranteed to get the same one back. Best way to keep your data safe is to keep possession of it. 1 - 2 weeks to fix a battery or keyboard is a joke

It would be nice to be able to remove the drive when sending the unit in for repair, especially since you're no guaranteed to get the same one back. Best way to keep your data safe is to keep possession of it. 1 - 2 weeks to fix a battery or keyboard is a joke

With my old - old thinkpad I could pop it out in 10 seconds and a screwdriver.

So if you want proper function keys, you're limited to two processor cores.

But that might not matter as much as it otherwise would because Apple has potentially skimped on cooling.

The Touch Bar is the "pro" option, but if you're using a desktop Mac, which many kinds of "pro" almost certainly are, you can't get a keyboard with one.

Oh, and upgrading from "practically unusable" to "barely usable" amounts of SSD storage is extortionately expensive.

As someone actively in the process of shopping for a Mac, I really feel like Apple is pushing me away as a customer. It's almost like you have to engage in doublethink to get to the point of pressing the "buy" button.

It would be nice to be able to remove the drive when sending the unit in for repair, especially since you're no guaranteed to get the same one back. Best way to keep your data safe is to keep possession of it. 1 - 2 weeks to fix a battery or keyboard is a joke

With my old - old thinkpad I could pop it out in 10 seconds and a screwdriver.

Still holds true with (at least some of) today's Thinkpads. I got a T480s and swapped the NVMe SSD and put a 2nd stick of RAM in there in about 2 minutes (being very careful not to wear the screws).

So Apple discontinued the regular Macbook line so they're all 'Pro' now but the cheaper model has half the number of ports. Gotta love marketing.

They're not all 'Pro' now... the ones with less processing oomph are the MacBook Airs.

Essentially, after making the MacBook lighter than the Air, they've now removed the MacBook altogether, so that the Air is lighter than the Pro, and also more energy efficient at the expense of performance. It also only has two USB-C ports and an audio jack.

The increased performance is quite welcome and fixes a glaring weak point in the previous system. The zero upgradability continues to be a sore spot with me unfortunately. That (and the keyboard) are the two reasons why my wife is reticent to upgrade to a newer machine. The improvements in the performance makes it a little easier to tolerate though.

(The addition of the touchbar is completely useless to her and I kind of wished it wasn't there)

The touch bar I can see lots of future uses for. however it needs to be on all apple keyboards.

long term the future is adaptable interfaces. a keyboard that will change layout based on program needs.

>According to iFixit, the Surface Laptop isn’t repairable at all. In fact, it got a 0 out of 10 for repairability and was labeled a “glue-filled monstrosity.” Ouch. That’s never happened before. The lowest scores previously were a 1 out of 10 for all previous iterations of the Surface Pro.